


Free Will Does Not a Free Will Make

by barghest



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Free Will, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:12:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barghest/pseuds/barghest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another request - the end of the first season finds Will Graham in a cell for Hannibal's crimes. In a place like that, anyone would have a lot of time to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free Will Does Not a Free Will Make

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tumblr user jeandiesathend](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tumblr+user+jeandiesathend).



> i spend too much time on requests and then dumb shit comes out like this  
> enjoy :'v  
> side note: the title is a stupid joke i am so sorry

For someone supposedly with an extensive network of friends and supportive (ex)colleagues, Will does not receive a lot of visitors.

Perhaps it's because he doesn't talk any more.

The concrete binding the bricks of his cell together is cold beneath his fingers, but Will does not feel it, tracing the lines slowly and methodically for hours at a time. He is not present - not really, anyway. Seated far back in the recesses of his mind, Will laces his fingers together and plans. Round and round the bricks his physical fingertips might go, but to him they are still whilst he thinks. Dr. Lecter would be proud of the amount of thinking he is doing, he figures, whilst he stares a thousand yards beyond the eyes of the guard who brings him dinner.

Will has not said a word outloud in three weeks when he asks for paper and a pencil.

He's given it out of good behaviour - the pencil is blunt, but that is all Will wants. Just something physical to occupy his hands whilst he thinks. (He was not much of an artist anyway.) Resting back against his bed, he doodles away on every inch of the paper, pencil barely lifting off of it from one sketch to the next. All Will draws is dogs. All Will thinks about is the maroon stones of Dr. Lecter's eyes and the creases in Dr. Lecter's skin when he smiled. Occasionally Will thinks about jabbing the pencil firmly into those eyes, should the doctor ever visit him again, and the lead snaps beneath the pressure, spraying grey granules over a sloppily drawn dog's face.

There must be a way to prove he is innocent, must there not. Will turns to his wall when he runs out of paper, sharpening the pencil on the bricks and scribbling dogs on their rough surface. Surely someone would look close enough at the evidence and realize he could not have done everything he was accused of. Surely Hannibal would slip up somewhere. The dogs on the walls grow bigger and wilder, their jaws were scrawled jags of teeth and their eyes deep pits of smudged graphite. The doctor was human, after all. And there had to be some way to exploit that.

All humans make mistakes. One night, Will snaps the pencil by accident and has to beg silently with his eyes for a replacement.

He is watched too closely to try something like Gideon did. Will has thought about that before - and he has thought about gripping Alana's neck across the table and holding her hostage when she comes to visit, using her as a negotiation tool. Her eye make up would be ruined more in fear than her usual anger, and his resulting inevitable death would be headline news before he got out of the interview room. Instead, he stays silent and still in his plastic chair when she comes to try and talk to him, feeling the bolts holding his seat to the floor besides his feet. Will wants to tell her he is sorry, but he's not sure what for.

Will wants to tell a lot of people sorry, if he is being honest. He etches them into his mind whilst he draws floppy ears and doggy paws on paper and brick. He want to tell Winston he is sorry, for leaving him and the rest of the family alone. He wants to tell Jack he is sorry, for letting himself get into this mess. He wants to tell Dr. Lecter he is sorry, for ever instilling any trust in him. Particularly the last one, Will decides, one quiet night when he lies still on the bed in his cell and stares at the cracks in the stonework of the ceiling. Hannibal and his skilled fingers and his soft voice is a large part of the driving force to get him out of here.

Perhaps the man will visit again. After all, he may wish to gloat through delicate words of comfort and support again. Will is almost sure of it. He sits with his back to the cell's entrance in the hope of feeling the man return before he sees him. Give him time to compose himself. Give him time to wipe the burst stitches and spurting arteries of his occasionally murderous plans from his eyes. He is innocent. Will is sure of his own innocence. He has to be.

It's just convincing everyone else, that is the issue.

Alana wants to believe it. The next time she visits, he jerks his hands across the table and encircles her fingers with his palms. His touch is soft and caressing, and he pleads understanding with his eyes for a full two and a half seconds before the real world sharpens into focus - a guard's hand on his shoulder roughly pulls him back and shoves him into his chair. And Will is still again. He doesn't look at Alana for the rest of the visit, but he can almost feel the tears in her eyes. It's something, at least. Will tells himself that in the mornings and the afternoons, when his hand hurts too much to draw and he lies on his bunk in silence.

Jack doesn't visit, only appears occasionally like a ghost, speaking to guards and psychologists who have tried their best to get words out of him. Will does not try to speak to him. He only broods, as one of them puts it. Broods in his bed, broods under his fringe, broods over the paper and blunt coloured pencils he is presented with at one stage, letting him give a doodled Winston a golden coat and a scribbled Dr. Lecter a red scarf. Dr. Lecter always wears a red scarf in the few drawings Will does of him.

Someone tells him he is going to be receiving a visit from the doctor - finally - in a week's time. They tell him whilst he doodles dogs running around a grassy field. They stand just a foot away from the bars, careful to be able to leap backwards should he try to attack. Will tries nothing of the sort, merely nodding and carrying on drawing. He doesn't even say a word. His hands only slow momentarily in his drawing, taking the informant's (a psychologist, one who has tried to get words from him before, all skittishness and fabric softened shirts) words in. Resuming his sketching, Will bunches himself up on the cold cell floor, pulling his paper closer.

Soon, he figures. Soon he will be able to do something. A physical, tangible step towards proving he is not a killer of the highest order. Soon everyone will understand.

Soon, Will tells the paper dogs beneath his fingers, very, very soon.


End file.
